Assistant Professor Zubair Shafiq was recently awarded an NSF Grant entitled "The Web Ad Technology Arms Race: Measurement, Analysis, and Countermeasures." The research, motivated by the observation that websites are now starting an arms race to fight against ad-blockers that cause significant revenue loss to the publishers, will be primarily focused on two fronts:

(1) Measuring the arms race between ad-blockers and anti ad-blockers, e.g., developing techniques to detect anti ad-blockers.

(2) Understanding the technological means of anti ad-blockers and possible countermeasures that may follow on the ad-blocker side.

The proposed research will inform industry stakeholders and policymakers.

This three-year project has been awarded $250,000.

Unabridged award abstract may be found here, CLAS news feature at this link.